Dorothy Dinnerstein (April 4, 1923 – December 17, 1992) was an American feminist academic and activist, best known for her book The Mermaid and the Minotaur (1976). Using some elements of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, Dinnerstein argued that sexism and aggression are both inevitable consequences of childrearing's being left more or less exclusively to women; the issues intrinsic to a child's engagement with and separation from its mother, Dinnerstein thought, end up being conflated with gender relations.

Jewish American, from the Bronx. Brother Albert Dinnerstein.Born in New York City, Dinnerstein went to Brooklyn College, CUNY for her undergraduate degree and earned the Ph.D. in psychology from the New School for Social Research in 1951. She taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey from 1959 until her death in an automobile accident.